Ffosyffin cyclist Finlay Tarling has made a strong start to the 2022 cycling season winning his first five races in a row culminating with a win at the weekend in Belgium.

Finlay has joined elder brother Joshua in the Belgian FlandersColor cycling team for 2022 and was keen to start the season off with a win for his new team. This came at the Welsh Cyclocross Championships at Pembrey on a flat but challenging course. Riding in the U16 race Fin broke away early on and took a solo win to become Welsh Champion.

In late January the action switched to the track with Fin competing in the prestigious Icebreaker series which brings together the best U16 track riders from all over the country. Each event is an Omnium format in which riders score points in three races before a hardfought final.

In Icebreaker 1 Fin managed to win all three qualifiers and the final and then repeated the same feat at Icebreaker 2 a fortnight later. In between he managed to take the win against the adults at the Castle Combe 10-mile TT clocking just over 20 minutes for the 10 mile course.

However, his biggest win to date was this last weekend when he took the win at the Ghent-Staden road race in Belgium. This event was contested over eight laps of a windy, exposed circuit that featured a couple of draggy roads and a fast, downhill sprint to the finish line.

Quite heavily marked at the start Fin still managed to win 5 ‘primes’, bonus sprints, at the end of each lap by outsprinting the bunch.

As the race wore on and the legs got tired Fin noticed a small gap after the 6th sprint and forged ahead alone. A nail biting few laps later he emerged as the solo winner to take the win by two minutes over the depleted bunch.

It’s now on to the Omloop Yerseke in Holland on 5 March for Fin.